Is Ben Affleck a new master of suspense? I’m not heralding a second coming of Hitchcock here, but based on Argo, the moniker certainly applies for the Bostonite. Affleck shows a fantastic talent for building and maintaining tension. After Gone Baby Gone and The Town, he cements his status as one of the finest filmmakers of the new millennium.

Although I actually prefer baby brother Casey in this regard, Ben’s skills as an actor are nothing to sneer at. However, if he keeps this pace up, he’ll go down in history as a gifted writer/director who could act well, instead of the other way around.

Argo isn’t flawless. It abuses a curse “cleverly” involving the name of the movie (that gets old pretty quickly) and loses a bit of steam for a while after an explosive kickoff (literally), but with great performances across the board (Alan Arkin and John Goodman being the standouts), a great 70’s look with acute attention to detail, and a great deal of suspense that rarely lets up, this is one of the best of 2012 and another winner in Affleck’s short but very solid filmography.

Side note: this review is also my 300th post 😀 Yay for milestones reached!

Very excited for this one. I’m going to see it tonight. Personal story: My mother said she’d heard of it from Bible study, when someone compared the rescuing of hostages to John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world….”). And I freaked out, because I had been talking about it nonstop for about a MONTH and the trailers were there every time we went to the movies within the last SIX months….guess she hears God speaking to her, not the TV or her son. 😉

Great review. I’m wondering: did you read Peter Travers’s “Argo” review a few minutes before writing the first paragraph? I remember he had written something about Ben Affleck’s great filmmaking, then clarifying that he was not calling him the next Hitchcock. 🙂

Great review! I think Ben’s a very capable director indeed, I’l be rooting for him to get a Best Director nomination. I also prefer Casey in terms of acting, even in Good Will Hunting, you could tell that Casey’s a better actor. That’s good though each has their own niche 🙂

Somehow, Argo was sold out tonight. Out for a month, so it’s well near impossible, especially when everyone’s going to see Twilight and Lincoln. Oh well. So a Good Samaritan refunding his Lincoln tickets offered them to us (that was sold out to), and we’re seeing that now.

Hey I completely agree with how you say people will look back and remember Afflecks career. Its just incredible to think he is getting all of this acclaim now after appearing in horrendous films like Gigli just a few short years ago. Great review and loving the blogathon